Crowley was driving about the city in the Bentley. Rather randomly, if truth be told. He didn't really have a destination in mind, he was just getting to know the place. Taking note of anything that looked interesting, or anything he might want to revisit. There was a restaurant, there was an electronics store, there was a...

There was a bookstore. A very strangely familiar-looking bookstore.

The Bentley screeched to a halt, Crowley unheeding of any commotion he might be causing. After a few moments, he pulled over and parked, sliding out of the Bentley slowly. He stood there for a minute before stepping up to the door. He glanced at the sign, the illegible listing of the store's hours, just like the one he'd seen a thousand times elsewhere.

"I'm going to bloody well regret this..."

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, letting it close behind him.

"Um... well..." Aziraphale was feeling so very articulate at the moment. "Would you like to come have a seat? We can, erm, drink... and talk, if you'd like..."

Just like old times.

He wasn't sure how this was going to turn out, not sure at all, but he did know that he didn't want Crowley to leave. Even though his arrival had brought back painful memories, even though this wasn't technically the same Crowley, it was still... well, Crowley. Things just weren't the same without him.

"Yeah... That sounds good," Crowley muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. He could probably use a drink. Several drinks, even. It hadn't been that long since he'd gotten good and drunk, but sometimes a situation demanded it.

He glanced at the door, and the lock clicked shut. Last thing they were going to need was someone walking in when they were both smashed and discussing white elephants or something equally daft.

"I've got a while. I was just running around checking out the city, I'm moving here soon. I've got a friend helping me find a place."

Aziraphale walked to the back room, quickly busying himself with getting out two glasses and two bottles of wine. It was very good wine, too, very strong stuff. He had a feeling that they would work their way through these easily, but it was a good start.

"Oh, is that so? It is a nice place. Odd, yes, but nice... Who is this friend of yours?" He asked as he pulled out a bottle of gin, as well, on a second thought. His voice sounded normal enough, but he was prattling on to a certain extent. It was a natural reaction to carry on such polite chatter while he had a chance to absorb this. He wasn't quite sure yet that he was stuck in some strange illusion.

"You're rambling, angel," Crowley pointed out blandly, strolling after him to settle into a chair. "She goes by Nightshade. I have made a personal choice to call her Shady. She's an interesting sort."

He noted the addition of the gin with mild, amused interest. Evidently Aziraphale shared his opinion of the current situation as being a bad one to be sober in.

"As for the place... It does seem decent enough, though I haven't even been here any time and already it's the same old mess again. Though, admittedly, it's still better than staying back in London where anybody could find me."

"I can't say that I've heard of her, but this is a very big place. Is she a human or something else? It really is fascinating, how many different kinds of people there are out here," Aziraphale said as he settled into a chair across from Crowley and opened one of the bottles of wine.

"I am aware that I'm rambling," he agreed absently. He sighed faintly as he filled their glasses. "As for being involved in the same old mess, as you call it, I haven't been. I have spoken to some who are involved in various 'messes'... There are so many, too. Some of them are quite nice, and they haven't asked me to do anything for them."

He sipped his wine. As much as he wanted to help people who genuinely needed it... After Crowley's disappearance, things just weren't the same. He wasn't the same.

He hadn't realized how complicated things were before. Nothing had seemed complicated merely because they worked so well that way. Without Crowley everything fell apart in ways that he hadn't even thought about before, even with the business of the world nearly ending that time.

It was so tempting to talk about these things, but he wasn't sure if he should. He was aware that he would definitely be asking one question, but only once he'd had a few drinks.

"Vampire," Crowley said, picking up his glass and taking a drink. "Something else, too, but I haven't asked because it doesn't really matter to me. She's Shady and I like her, good enough for me."

He pointed at Aziraphale, an expression of mild aggravation flitting across his features. "You're an angel. That means, for the most part, you get the nice ones. If you want to volunteer, good, but if you don't, they won't bother you, I guess. Not your dimension, not your mess, after all. But I'm a demon, so the people who might be interested in getting me on their side aren't inclined to sit back and wait for me to come to them."

They also tended to not be the sort of people who took a 'no' gracefully, either. Crowley was a bit worried about that, honestly. He hadn't actually turned them down yet, but he knew he very well might. Just what he needed, really. More enemies.

"Plus some angel who has a positive talent for being irritating, and this is me saying this."

"Oh dear, I may know who you're talking about." Aziraphale could really imagine that the two might get along, having a couple of things in common, but he knew that Crowley would scoff at such an idea. Him, getting along with an angel? Aside from Aziraphale, of course, that was different.

Vampires. Hm. He wasn't sure what to think of those. They seemed to be a rather disturbing crowd, on the whole, but he did know that some of them weren't quite so bad.

He drained the rest of his wine in one drink and then fiddled with his empty glass, a bit nervously. He was much more relaxed now than he had been a few moments ago, but he was still feeling terribly awkward.

"You don't have to deal with anyone if you don't wish to," he ventured after a few seconds, nearly managing to drop the glass onto the floor. "They do not have you bound, and they do not have the power or influence to force you to do anything. You... we are truly capable of having free will here, I suppose."

"I know," Crowley muttered, draining his own glass. "Mind, that doesn't change the fact that turning them down could very well earn me some powerful enemies. But not turning them down means getting embroiled in the whole thing all over again. Same Shit, Different Dimension. I'm not so stupid as to think it's easy to make a deal with any Hell that's got no strings attached. Plus, they haven't got anything I want, anyway."

There was only one thing he wanted that he couldn't get easily enough himself, and no Hell could give it to him. The closest thing to it was sitting across from him right now, trying to keep from breaking a glass.

Azirphale occupied himself with refilling their glasses, which he managed to do without spilling anything.

"We're not so powerful that it would be worth causing trouble too much over. Even if something does happen, we'll work things out, not to worry," he said in a reasonable tone.

That sort of thing seemed downright easy compared to some of the other issues he was thinking about. He took a drink of wine, absently thankful for the fact that it was very old, good, strong wine. He was already starting to feel a bit fuzzy.

"Optimist," Crowley grumbled, taking another drink. "Well, maybe. I hope so. Anyway, I told them both to bugger off and not bother me until I've found a flat here and got moved in."

This was strange. This was all so familiar and comfortable, but there was still that little voice in the back of Crowley's head going 'This isn't your angel. You haven't really got any right to be here.' Maybe if he had enough to drink, it would shut up.

Aziraphale finished off his second glass in a couple of drinks and refilled his glass.

Oddly enough, he was having very similar thoughts about Crowley. Whatever had happened to his Aziraphale, it was hard to imagine anything happening to him that would permanently put him out of the picture. Unlike what happened to Crowley... The moral implications of all of this were beyond anything he'd had to deal with before.

But maybe... maybe it didn't really matter.

He was Aziraphale. This was Crowley. If they came from nearly identical worlds, maybe they were identical, except for the time period, why should they worry so much about who was really from where? And when?How could one ever be entirely sure with how tangled the multiverse was at times?

So what was the biggest problem here? Aziraphale mulled over it as he sipped his wine. It wasn't the fact that this wasn't the Crowley from his world, presumably. That was strange, yes, but not the main cause of the awkwardness.

It was... well...

Complicated. Because things between them were. He had a nagging suspicion that this wasn't nearly as complicated as they were both thinking that it was, but...

At this point, though, the pleasant fuzzy feelings were making it harder to think about such things. It made it easier to think about the less complicated things, like how much better he felt at the moment than he had felt in years.

He looked up at Crowley and smiled faintly, a warm expression that wasn't awkward or uncomfortable. "I'm glad that you came in, Crowley," he said solemnly.

After a moment, in which Crowley stared down into his glass then finished the wine in it, he smiled back. It was only a faint half-smile, but it wasn't a smirk, and it wasn't sly, or smug, or any one of a half-dozen other things Crowley was prone to.

"Yeah. So'm I, angel."

The little protesting voice was indeed getting quieter with the application of more alcohol, and Crowley was perfectly content with that. This was Aziraphale. He looked, sounded, acted, and most importantly, felt like the angel Crowley knew so well. If he wasn't precisely the same one, and Crowley knew he wasn't, well, he was close enough. At this moment, the gaping, Aziraphale-shaped hole in his life wasn't aching, which was a damn sight better than before he'd stepped into the so-familiar bookshop.

Aziraphale smiled again and filled Crowley's glass for him. That was better, much better. He was confident now, more than ever, that things would work out somehow. As long as they stuck together, they always did.

"Have you noticed that your cassette tapes don't turn into Queen here?" He asked after taking another drink of wine. "I have some of yours that you let me borrow a while ago, they're all of Queen. I suppose you forgot that they'd been in your car for too long. Er, well, they're not precisely yours, but you know what I mean."

He admitted that he wasn't much of a Queen fan, but he'd become rather fond of those tapes.

"Hadn't noticed. I haven't been here very long, though," Crowley said, drinking. "Wouldn't surprise me if your me hadn't realized. I've kind of got used to anything I put in being Queen, no matter what it says it is. You take it for granted after a while."

It was alright, though. Crowley had rather liked Freddie Mercury. He wasn't a bad sort, and he'd had an amazing voice. A damn shame he'd gone and died.

"Maybe. Wonder why. You know I'm not very enthusiastic about that new music... What do they call it? S'not be-bop... Oh, yes, pop music. Short for popular music, I remember now."

Queen didn't exactly fall into that category, but it was a lot closer than he usually was.

"I made the mistake of listening to some of the music that everyone's excited about nowadays," he said, an expression of distaste on his face, accomplied by a very faint blush. He couldn't imagine how anyone could listen to such things.

At the comment about current music trends, Crowley coughed, and possibly looked a tiny bit guilty. He lifted his glass and drank in an effort to cover it. Well, as long as Aziraphale never, ever saw American Idol, he might get off lightly.

...He hoped the angel had never seen Britney Spears, too. That one he really DID feel fairly guilty about. Some things you just shouldn't inflict on people.

"You've got to change with the times, angel. I keep telling you that. I've got a good memory, anyway. You need to know what's what if you're going to keep a finger on the pulse of... pulse of... something. Starts with p. Means going forward. Progress!" The last was announced triumphantly as Crowley got a handle on the word he was looking for. He finished off his current glass of wine.

Crowley looked a little shifty. "I do a lot of work in the media. Have done ever since there was a media. You know how it goes, you do a little here, a little there, it all gets bigger... Next thing you're looking at some tart with a brain like marshmallow fluff becoming a big star, and wondering when it all got so out of hand."

"Yes, I know. They're not all bad sorts, but... really... And the recent clothing trends? They were telling me about them not too long ago. It seems like just yesterday parents were panicking if their daughter's skirt didn't at least go to her knees. Now... Well, they're lucky if they even get halfway. Even men's clothes lately... You know, I might be better off not following the trends, I think."

"Trends are different. Trends change every week. Sometimes from day to day," Crowley said, waving it off. "Even I don't bother keeping up with half of those. But you could at least track the big stuff, angel."

"S'going to take me weeks to get to know this place properly," he grumbled, picking up his glass again and drinking. "I really had a grip on things back home, before... Just before."

He still hadn't had enough to make him able to say 'Before my Aziraphale vanished and blew my whole life to pieces'.

"Oh, it'll take a while to get used to things here. This place is like, well, a whole lot of places crammed in together like... sardines in a can, isn't that how it goes? There's not much of a unified theme going on just yet, but I think it'll develop one sooner or later. Sort of like how things went at home over the past couple of years, er, centuries... except with recent technology."

He took another drink and frowned slightly.

"Would you mind if I asked you a bit of a... um, a sort of personal question?"

He probably would have phrased it better, had he been sober, but he was feeling rather fuzzy at the moment.

"Ever since you were... you know, taken back," he frowned, "Well, not you but you know what I mean," he said, deciding to give up on making the distinction clear. He took a deep breath. "I... er, what I mean to say is, well, if you were dragged back to Hell, what would you tell me to do? Especially supposing I met another version of you..." He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I'm not making much sense, am I?"

Crowley winced a bit and took a drink of his wine. "I'd tell you to get on with life, b'cause I wouldn't be coming back. S'why I'm moving out here, to avoid getting dragged back. I know they'll get 'round to it sooner or later. Make up some load of tosh about something they can recall me for, then once I'm down there... Well, they were really, really not happy about the whole Apocalypse thing."

He shuddered a little, thinking about what would be in store for him if they ever got their hands on him.

"Yes, I know," Aziraphale refilled their glasses yet again. "If I were to go back to Heaven... It wouldn't be exactly the same, of course, but I don't think I'd be ever going back to Earth." That was a depressing thought that he tried not to think about too much, especially since he'd left.

"I know that that's what I'd tell you, if it had been me instead... but... but I wouldn't be in for an eternity of torture," he said bitterly. "It would be... well, you know what it would be like, but still... not the same."